There wasn't much of a choice as they all reached for their voting levers – not when Celeste had admitted her guilt in that final moment. Togami didn't hesitate to select Celeste from the options, and from the speed with which the vote concluded, no one else had had many doubts either.
Celeste watched the flashing lights settle on her image with an explosion of multicolored confetti. "So I lost. Well, that sucks."
"Your biggest mistake was trying to frame me instead of someone more believable," Togami told her. "No one capable of using their brains would really think that I would wear something as ludicrous as that costume if I were going to kill someone. Your ploy was flawed from the start."
"Was it?" She shrugged. "Framing you meant that you missed most of the investigation, and it left Naegi emotionally unbalanced. When I told Yamada what kind of disguise we would need, I didn't expect him to make something like… that. I guess trying to work with someone else was a mistake, after all."
"But how did you get Yamada to agree to commit murder?" Kirigiri asked. "Did you use…?"
"Ah, of course you would figure it out." Celeste smiled at Kirigiri. "For those of you who are still left, I'll avoid mentioning it by name, but yes. I used the one thing that both Yamada and Ishimaru were obsessed with."
The plan Celeste explained to them certainly did highlight her talent for lying – but on the other hand, fooling someone like Yamada wouldn't exactly have been difficult. Togami wasn't inclined to give Celeste any credit at all, not after everything she'd put them through – and especially not since one of her lies had apparently been to try to undermine Naegi's faith in him.
"And Yamada believed the lies wholeheartedly, right up to the moment of his death," Celeste finished, idly twisting a curl around her finger.
"How can human life mean so little to you?" Asahina demanded, her outrage clear.
Celeste looked puzzled. "But that's a non-issue. I simply did everything in my power to win."
"Now you sound like Togami!" Hagakure accused.
But before Togami could sneer at this statement as it deserved, Celeste looked sharply over at Hagakure, with more animation than she'd shown since she'd admitted her name. "Oh? I sound like him, is that it? Do I sound lovesick and brainwashed into remaining here forever? Do I sound like my resolve to leave has been broken?"
Togami stared at her. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Don't you know? But Monokuma spelled it out for us during that assembly." Without her gothic façade, Celeste's red stare was somehow even more unsettling as it landed on Togami. "By connecting yourself to Naegi, you lost the will to graduate. Having a strong attachment to any of the others forces a player to bow out of the game – even someone like you, who started out so determined to win. Mere days, and your resolve was gone."
"My resolve is perfectly intact," Togami gritted out. "I've just refocused it on a more appropriate goal."
"And is that how you would have viewed it when we began the killing game?" Celeste countered. "You changed. Your interaction with another player turned you into something that your original self would find unrecognizable and repellant – and it happened without your knowing."
"Then it's just that you were upset about that?" Asahina asked in disbelief. "You decided to murder two people because Togami and Naegi started dating?"
"Not because it happened to them," Celeste said calmly. "Because I didn't want it to happen to me. When Monokuma made that announcement, I could see the threat facing us all – the one that Togami succumbed to. The more time I spent around all of you, the greater the chance that one of you might affect me enough to break my own resolve and force me to give up on the one thing that matters most to me right now. You see, from the moment our new life here began, my only thought has been escape."
"But you've been telling us about how we should all just accept living here!" Hagakure protested.
"Obviously that was a lie!" Celeste snarled, fury smashing through her forced calmness as she glared. "I couldn't take it! I hated it here more than anyone else! I wanted to get out! Every day was fresh torture! Do you have any idea what it was like to realize that one of you could make me accept it? That every agonizing second in this pit dragged me closer to staying here for good? I couldn't accept that – not when a life here would mean giving up on my dream forever."
"We all have dreams, you know," Ogami said. "Things we want that we can't do in here."
"But if you won't kill for them, then there is something else that you value more," Celeste said, her mask slipping on again as she smiled. "And I will not place a higher value on anything than on my dream – not after risking my life time and again in the underground world of gambling just for a chance to achieve it."
"What dream are you talking about?" Asahina asked. "What could be worth it?"
"To live in a European castle." Celeste smiled sweetly. As she elaborated on her warped plan to create a gothic castle filled with vampire cosplayers, any trace of sympathy evaporated off the other students' faces.
"I would never have had the chance to make it a reality from within these walls," she said at last. "But it seems my dream has been scattered to the winds. Still, I pursued my dream to the very end, so I don't have any regrets."
"But you didn't have to take it so far!" The words seemed to catch in Naegi's throat, and when Togami looked over at him, he saw that the other boy looked crushed at Celeste's explanation. "If – if all you really wanted was to get out, then – then if we'd just worked together –"
"Do you really believe that?" Celeste looked at Naegi, seeming almost puzzled by his misery. "Well, perhaps you do. But I have lived my life as a gambler, you see, and I play by a gambler's rules." She leaned forward. "You can win against the other players, but you can never beat the house. I think nothing of sacrificing other people for my own ends. That is how different our values are. There is simply no room for understanding."
"How can you be so calm about it?" Asahina asked. "You're about to die! Aren't you scared?"
Celeste looked at her. "My ability to lie is unrivaled. It's not just others – I can even deceive my own emotions. So I don't fear death. Kill me however you like."
But when she tried to smile, the expression shook on her face, a weak mockery of her words. So she was afraid after all. Togami narrowed his eyes at her, remembering those moments in the locker after he'd heard the first body discovery announcement when bone-deep terror for Naegi's wellbeing struck him. What she felt now had to be exponentially worse than what she'd inflicted on him, not the worry over a possibility, but the dread of an approaching certainty. Good.
"You all done then?" Monokuma's cheerful voice rang out. "Good, then let's get rolling!"
"Then I'll let you hold on to this." Celeste passed a key over to Kirigiri. "I don't know if it will give you the hope you're looking for. I didn't believe it would, but maybe –" She stopped and shook her head. "Well, it doesn't matter. Take care, everyone."
"Let's give it everything we've got!" Monokuma said, not giving anyone else a chance to answer. "It's punishment time!"
The chains shot out of the wall to lock around Celeste's neck and haul her away. On the wall across the room, the elaborate creamy curtains on one of the false windows fell away to reveal a real window, looking out on a gothic castle courtyard.
Not wanting to get closer, but knowing Monokuma would force them to watch, the remaining students slowly stepped away from their podiums and made their way to the window. Togami started to seek out Naegi as he went, only to find that the other boy was already at his side, standing just close enough for their arms to brush together. That wasn't enough, though, not after all this. Togami didn't draw attention by looking away from the window, but he quietly let his hand slip over so his fingers could interlock with Naegi's. And as a stake rose up in the middle of the courtyard, revealing Celeste tied to it, Naegi gripped his hand in return.
Junko leaned back in her chair and grinned as her firetruck smashed Celeste to pieces. Now that was what she called a job well done – or should it be medium rare, since the flames hadn't had a chance to burn? Hah, Celeste would have hated that pun, wouldn't she? Too bad there wasn't enough of her left to make faces about it now.
Now, how were her precious classmates taking it? The shock of death could be so brutal. Junko switched her control from the castle to the Monokuma on the trial grounds, basking in the horrified expressions before her. Asahina looked like she was going to be sick, poor dear, and Ogami was too caught up in her hypocritical fury to notice. And –
Oh. Oh, dear. What was that? Junko tilted the Monokuma's head, trying to move the camera to get a better look.
Standing in the center of the group, Naegi certainly looked just as horrorstricken as she'd expected, eyes trembling and shoulders quivering like he might burst into an adorable mess of tears. It was all perfectly appropriate for a kind boy who'd just seen one of his dear friends die painfully. And next to him, Togami stood cold and aloof, only the faintest hint of creases around his eyes and mouth suggesting that he'd seen anything appalling – again, just how he ought to look.
The part that made Junko frown was the way their hands clasped together, a tiny instance of strength in the middle of despair.
It was sweet. It was a touching reaffirmation of their feelings for each other.
It was boring.
Junko drummed her fingers on the console, all her delight for her darling classmates draining away. Everything she'd done before, the embarrassing assemblies and heart-shaped confetti – it all sounded so tedious now. Who cared if the boys were staring at each other like googly-eyed sheep?
It was time for a new approach.
Author's Note: So the third class trial is over, but the story itself is not. I do intend to keep going through the end of the game, with more changes as everything has more and more of an impact.
